Engaged Learning

Students come to William & Mary wanting to change the world. Through engaged learning, they leave with the tools to do it.

Intense learning experiences at William & Mary engage students in competing ideas through inquiry, research, experimentation and application. All learning engages students at some level. But much learning is essentially passive -- listening to or reading about concepts and methodologies, remembering and repeating facts. Engaged learning, by contrast, requires students to challenge and debate ideas, take seriously views different than their own, and explore boundaries. Students actively embrace and wrestle with concepts. They learn by doing.

We have small classes, close interaction between professors and students, and the intense experience of discovery through research and service. Engaged learning occurs in many forms from intimate freshmen seminars to participation in faculty-led programs, or service trips abroad, work in professors' labs or research programs, co-authoring papers with faculty mentors, and independent research projects.

These opportunities are not extras at William & Mary. They define education here. William & Mary prepares students to lead in whatever fields they enter, to thrive in a complex, changing world, and to make a difference in their communities, states and nations.